Jeremys department store in San Francisco’s South Park to close

Shoppers look through merchandise at Jeremy's department store in San Francisco Friday morning, November 27, 2009.

Photo: Erin Lubin, Special to The Chronicle

It’s a last call, of sorts: Jeremys department store, the San Francisco discount emporium for high-end clothing bargains, will shut its doors at 2 S. Park St. for good on Sunday and consolidate its wares into its Berkeley branch. Store officials said it has fallen victim to the South Park neighborhood’s changing demographics.

“We found that the technology demographic doesn’t really shop as much at Jeremys as the more creative types that used to live in South Park when we started,” said founder Jeremy Kidson. “We feel that, as a company, we’ve always pioneered locations, and South of Market doesn’t feel like it’s the other side of the tracks anymore — it’s so developed. So we want to go to the East Bay and continue with our legacy.”

The store, founded as New West by Kidson in 1987 in a rented office space, was open on Saturdays only and was a hit selling samples bought from local clothing companies.

In 1993, Kidson renamed the store after himself and moved it to its current location in 1996. He expanded to Berkeley in the late 1990s. The store is known for selling handbags, couture gowns, shoes and menswear to customers who come from around the Bay Area for bargains. Shoppers might find anything from a Celine trapeze bag for $1,439 (down from $4,100) to a pair of silver sparking Tom Ford pumps for $917 (down from $3,890) to a pair of Persol sunglasses for $159 (down from $455).

The store will be open for business as usual on Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. — and offering 40 percent off all previously marked-down women’s apparel and women’s and men’s shoes. After that, it’s Berkeley only.

It’s possible that three new high-end discount stores on Market Street — Nordstrom Rack, Saks Off Fifth and Neiman Marcus Last Call — may have pulled customers in different directions. But Kidson said parking in South Park has become increasingly difficult, if not a deterrent, for customers who drive in, and that the changing demographics haven’t helped.

“The people working in the neighborhood are not as drawn to the designer and couture product as they were in the ’90s,” he said. “It’s less artists and photographers and more emerging tech. We think the East Bay will be a better home for us.”

A view of the front of Jeremy's in San Francisco, Calif., on Tuesday, September 9, 2014.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

It’s hard to know what’s afoot, since Union Square is bursting at the seams with newly opened boutiques from Maison Margiela, Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Valentino and other luxury purveyors eager to tap into the wealth associated with the influx of highly paid social media workers and their bosses — tech millionaires and billionaires.

Out of season

The goods at Jeremys were often a season old, which didn’t bother some of San Francisco’s best-dressed women, including businesswoman and philanthropist Pamela Joyner, who bought a Valentino gown a few years ago at Jeremys and wore it to the Ellis Island Medal of Honor Awards in New York last month.

Kidson may have his finger on the pulse: Social media workers don’t wear couture to the office, after all. Or it could it be that some of them are able and willing to pay full price for an “it” bag when it’s in season.

One thing is for sure: Kidson will not be looking for a new location in San Francisco. “I love San Francisco. I was born in San Francisco. I plan to always be a part of it,” he said. “But I think Jeremys is going to be an East Bay company.”

Carolyne Zinko, a native of Wisconsin, joined The San Francisco Chronicle in 1993 as a news reporter covering Peninsula crime, city government and political races. She worked as the paper’s society columnist from 2000 to 2004, when she wrote about the lifestyles of the rich but not necessarily famous. Since then, she has worked for the Sunday Style and Datebook sections, covering gala night openings and writing trend pieces. Her profiles of personalities have included fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and Emanuel Ungaro fashion house owner Asim Abdullah, to name a few. In a six-month project with The Chronicle’s investigative team, she recently revealed the misleading practices of a San Francisco fashion charity that took donations from wealthy philanthropists but donated little to the stated cause of helping the developmentally disabled. On the lifestyle front, her duties also including writing about cannabis culture for The Chronicle and its cannabis website, www.GreenState.com website.